Three Democratic senators on Monday filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general. Whitaker was appointed by Trump to lead the Justice Department after Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced out of the role earlier this month. Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono filed the complaint against Whitaker in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday. All three issues fiery statements. “Installing Matthew Whitaker so flagrantly defies constitutional law that any viewer of School House Rock...

So back to the tragic murder of Jamal Khashoggi. My intelligence sources tell me he had worked as an intelligence agent for the Saudi intelligence service, GID, for around 20 years. At one point he was sent by GID to Sudan to meet Osama bin Laden and to try to lure him away from terrorism. He failed. Khashoggi had always been close to the Muslim Brotherhood, the people who took over Egypt under Morsi following the so-called Arab Spring. The Muslim Brotherhood is a hard-line Islamist organisation dedicated to the introduction of Sharia and the creation of an Islamic caliphate....

Other governments are keenly interested in following China’s lead. I’ve been pondering the excellent 1964 history of the Southern Song Dynasty’s capital of Hangzhou, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276 by Jacques Gernet, in light of the Chinese government’s unprecedented “Social Credit Score” system, which I addressed in Kafka’s Nightmare Emerges: China’s “Social Credit Score”. The scope of this surveillance is so broad and pervasive that it borders on science fiction: a recent Western visitor noted that train passengers hear an automated warning on certain lines, in Mandarin and English, that their compliance with...

Angela Merkel is on her way out as Chancellor of Germany, whether it be at the end of her term (she’s not running again) or through being forced out sooner. But that doesn’t mean that she’s going quietly into that good night. Following some rather acerbic remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron about the European Union needing to be able to stand up to the United States, Merkel chimed in this week with a wonderful plan of her own, no matter how offensive it may sound. She suggested that the EU needs their own standing army so they can be...

After Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, Estonia has also left the UN migration pact. “In forming the governing coalition, we agreed that we make decisions only by consensus. The government has today failed to reach agreement at the Cabinet meeting on support for the UN migration pact. Therefore, the government will not join the agreement, “wrote Prime Minister Jüri Ratas (Center Party) on Thursday on Facebook.The comprehensive management of immigration is important for all countries, emphasised Ratas. However, the laws of Estonia are already in line with democratic and European principles. This also applies to the future. For the...

Looking out the window on icy snow this cold, gray mid-November morning, it is hard not to make the comparison. Minneapolis is looking more and more like Moscow on the Mississippi. Predictions by global warming enthusiasts not withstanding, the weather is not the only similarity. A grayness hovers over Minnesota like a fog. It is a heaviness. It feels oppressive. The gray funk resulting from the reality that the Left has strengthened its grip on this state and its government. The Governor-elect wasted little time announcing that we should brace for the jolt of a hefty tax increase on gasoline....

The Russian Embassy in the US extends condolences to residents of California regarding the tragic consequences of wildfires raging across the US state, the embassy stated on Twitter. "We extend our most sincere condolences and heartfelt sympathy to the people of #California regarding the huge amount of damage and dozens of human casualties caused by destructive forest fires," the Russian diplomatic mission wrote. So far, the California wildfires death toll has reached 79 people, while 1,276 people are reported missing...

Zhores A. Medvedev, the Soviet biologist, writer and dissident who was declared insane, confined to a mental institution and stripped of his citizenship in the 1970s after attacking a Stalinist pseudoscience, died on Thursday at his home in London, where he had lived for decades. He had turned 93 the day before. Dr. Medvedev’s twin brother, the historian Roy Medvedev, told the Russian news media that the cause was a heart attack. He said his family had celebrated Dr. Medvedev’s birthday on Wednesday. “He had never complained about his heart,” he told RBC, a Russian news agency. “Three ambulances came,...

The National Defense Strategy Commission consists of former top Republican and Democratic officials that were selected by Congress, and they have just issued a major report which is absolutely stunning. At one time, the military dominance of the United States was unquestioned, but in recent years Russia and China have been working feverishly to close that gap. Both nations have been rapidly developing extremely advanced new weapons systems, and the substantial advantage that the U.S. once enjoyed has been evaporating very quickly. At this point, things have shifted so dramatically that this new report says that the United States could...

Europe faces even deeper political turmoil and the possibility of mass migration from Africa unless the world urgently addresses the threat of climate change, the former US secretary of state John Kerry said on Thursday. In the discussion with the Observer Kerry said: “We are heading for catastrophe unless we respond to some life-threatening challenges very rapidly. We have a climate-denying president that pulls us out of the the Paris climate change agreement at a time when literally every day matters. “Europe is already crushed under this transformation that is taking place due to migration. In Germany Angela Merkel is...

Facebook is being hit with fresh criticism from Capitol Hill as lawmakers reacted harshly Thursday to a New York Times investigation that detailed the company’s efforts to wield influence in Washington after becoming aware of Russia-linked activity on its platform during the 2016 presidential campaign. The explosive article laid out how Facebook’s leadership was reluctant to confront the Russian efforts on its platform and was unprepared for the subsequent firestorm and fallout, which involved the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Specifically, the Times reported that the tech giant used a Republican opposition research firm called Definers Public Affairs to accuse liberal financier...

President Trump on Thursday accused special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of "screaming and shouting" at people and "threatening" them in an effort to find evidence that Trump colluded with Russia. Trump, who had been silent about Mueller on Twitter for the last few weeks and was thought to be preparing written answers to his team, said investigation is now a "total mess." “The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess,” Trump said Twitter. “They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come...

A special European Union initiative to protect trade with Iran against newly reimposed U.S. sanctions faces possible collapse with no EU country willing to host the operation for fear of provoking U.S. punishment.

Angela Merkel called for the creation of a 'real, true' European army during a speech to EU ministers on Tuesday in a rebuke to President Trump. The German Chancellor also called for a European Security Council that would be responsible for coordinating defence policy on the continent. Merkel spoke out after French President Emmanuel Macron floated the same idea last week, drawing the ire of President Donald Trump.

Parity: A shocking new study from a bipartisan panel charged with analyzing the Trump administration’s National Defense Study actually concludes that U.S. military advantages may have eroded to a point where it could lose a war with Russia or China. The Washington Post reports: The National Defense Strategy Commission, comprised of former top Republican and Democratic officials selected by Congress, evaluated the Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, which ordered a vast reshaping of the U.S. military to compete with Beijing and Moscow in an era of renewed great-power competition. While endorsing the strategy’s aims, the commission warned that Washington...

People's connections in the US to Google – including its cloud, YouTube, and other websites – were suddenly rerouted through Russia and into China in a textbook Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijacking attack. That means folks in Texas, California, Ohio, and so on, firing up their browsers and software and connecting to Google and its services were instead meandering through systems in Russia and China, and not reaching servers belonging to the Silicon Valley giant. Netizens outside of America may also have been affected. The Chocolate Factory confirmed that for a period on Monday afternoon, from 1312 to 1435 Pacific...

France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has called for Europe to become an “empire” to compete with the United States after the country’s President Emmanuel Macron called for an EU army to defend against the NATO ally. “It’s about Europe having to become a kind of empire, as China is. And how the U.S. is,” Mr Le Maire told Germany’s Handelsblatt. Adding that it would be a “peaceful empire,” the economics and finance minister touted the progressive government’s green credentials, saying that the European empire should “rel[y] on green growth. Neither China nor the U.S., who are leaving the Paris...

Victor Davis Hanson told Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow on Monday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily that French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal for a European Union army is “absurd,” noting France’s failure to meet its financial commitments to NATO. Hanson reflected on Macron’s Sunday remarks at the centennial commemoration of World War I’s armistice in Paris, France, where the French leader said, “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism: Nationalism is treason.” Hanson said, “I was kind of shocked, because here the host was taking the occasion to pose as Europe’s next leader by basically attacking not only Eastern...